Second Vent

I have been thinking a lot of negatives lately and I am starting to think about all that energy I have lost that could have been put into thinking more positively.  It is time to take on board that stuff that I have been listening to.  It is time to remember that I am the only one who can go inside myself and make change.  Other people out there control what goes on out there, but inside I am the only one that can reach in and control what I am thinking.  Stress is a pain which comes to tell you that there is something that you need to change.  The way out is to remember that I alone can take charge of my mind and change the state of my mind.  I must be able to do this, I have to make myself accept this.  I have to discover what is driving me to stress and feeling down and then questioning myself looking for the whys that I think think this and putting those whys to the test.  Is this really the situation or is it something that my mind is making it up. 

My natural state is a loving, peaceful human being,  Babies are not born stressed or hurt.  I need to remind myself that I am a human being and that I am a peaceful loving soul.  I have to think of myself as a lotus blooming in mud.   Life is a journey, there will be ups and downs and wrong turns, I must have patience with myself and trust that I  will find the right path, I must avoid overthinking and analysing.  Remember "This too shall pass" Meanwhile I can look at this transition this down period as an opportunity to explore myself,  work my way through.  I must be gentle and open and give myself time.  I must do things for myself, when I do good to others, I am doing good for myself.   I am OK and I will be OK.

Another begininng . A Place to Vent

Ok, so it has been a long time since I have written anything here - over a year in fact.  Well here I go again, don't let it be said that I am giving up on these things.  So Pockets of Small Somethings, here I go with the latest installment and the latest turn that this blog has taken.  My daily vents where I will write and get the thoughts in my head out.  It sounds like a plan!

OK, I have been reading a lot lately about the meaning of life and I am thinking that maybe I have done with that and need to move on to something else.  I am feeling small and a undervalued, worthless at times, I need to move on and get out of the rut that I am in.  But I need to know how to go about this and work it out for myself.  How do I discover that happiness in my life. I am not talking about being in a happy state all the time - well at least that's not what I think i want.  Rather it is to be happy and content in life with all the speed bumps that get thrown up along the way.  I need to get over this current mood I am in and discover things about myself.  I need to break through the negativity that comes and find something that makes me happy.  I am listening/watching youtube and finding some stuff on that.  I am not waking up in the middle of the night now going over things.  I am not waking up feeling scared of the day ahead as I was doing, but there is a very big unease about my life, my work and relationships with family, work colleagues, I need to stop harping on in my head about this and stop the self talk that goes along.  I need to discipline my mind and get over all this noise that comes up in my head.  So I will do the meditations and I will continue to listen to postitive stuff.  I will  keep going and try not to let life get me down.  I will count the blessings that I have because there are blessings.  I will change myself and get over these thoughts that come up. 

Start today to do this.  So I am on this journey.  It is a road with many different branches and sometimes I walk down the wrong road and then have to find myself back on the right route.  I am OK and despite everything I am doing ok.  I was listening to a talk and a Brahma was talking about being at a point in life where you start to despair and thinking about life being like the hero's journey.  So I am on the hero's journey.  Yes life will throw me challenges and I may not do so well at times, but I will go on and endure and get better and move on just a little down this road.  Pockets full of Somethings.  In my pocket I have a screw, what have you?   Sometimes all you need to do is something simple - putting a hand in your pocket and you pull out treasure,   I need to get over this rut and find myself down that road.  I will OK and I am OK.

Goodbye students, Bye Bye

The academic year has finished and it is time to farewell students and prepare to welcome others. The students are the best part of my job. I like helping them, I enjoy showing them what the library can offer them.

I hope they have come to realise that going to university is a life changing event. I hope they dived in to their studies and got to the marrow of it and realised the richness of an education, rather than just getting a degree

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I was a first generation university student. My mother had always told us about the haves and the havenots. The haves went to university, they got the education and the good jobs. We, as part of the havenots, got the trade or the factory jobs. When I graduated with an M.A. degree, she told me that my education was useless, it was nothing compared to her life education. I don't blame my mother, it's the way she was brought up. But my daughter is not going to have any of that.

I did my secondary education at a technical school. When I left I got a job and stayed their twelve years, doing just what I had been brought up to do, not succeed. After the twelve years I went to England on holiday and one day I got drunk with my cousin on Johnny Walker scotch. In my drunken state I told her how miserable I was and how I hated working in the job that I was doing. Luckily for me, my cousin was a lecturer in psychology at the University of Lancaster at the time. She then gave me one of the best counselling sessions I have ever had and convinced me to try going to uni. I came back to Australia and applied. To my amazement I was accepted. I started as a mature age student and one of the things that immediately struck me was how young most students were. I had this sense of university students with long hair and beards. Images from the Vietnam war era when you used to see students protesting on television. I had no idea of what university would be like, or if I was capable of doing the work. I was someone who plodded on and persevered and eventually got my degree in the end. This is one thing that has affected my teaching, I understand that students are not just a homogenous group and I can sympathise with those students, who struggle with university study. I think also of importance to the way that I teach is that I grew up going to libraries and reading and finding libraries, much like I found university study, a liberating experience. When I teach students information literacy, what I am telling them is this is what the library can do! This is the power of the library! Get into it and go for it

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Belief

I was watching dvds of Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man. It got me thinking and inspired me to write what comes next. The episode that I watched was episode 11; Knowledge or certainty. Where Bronowski beautifully looks at the fallibility of knowledge and the tragic consequences of certainty. If you have have seen this episode, no doubt you will remember the segment he filmed at Auschwitz and you will know just how powerful it was.

So, it got me thinking about what people regard as knowledge and perceptions of that. I suppose what I was really thinking about was religion and atheism. I am not particularly religious, but I am interested in seeking out the big why us, why are we here questions. If that means reading the Bible I can dip into that. I have incidentally also read the Qur'an - expecting to find statements about lets kill unbelievers and all women must be veiled and of course women are not permitted to drive - and what did I find? None of that.

Anyway, as Bronowski said in one of the episodes, let's not beat about the bush! You can't pigeon hole knowledge, no one has the right to say they have absolute knowledge. For what is knowledge but something that is hung on our own personal experiences, values and our own situation. Knowledge/science is always fuzzy. If it were not the case how would we have evolved? We evolve by learning, whether individually or socially. Imagine a child being born that knows everything there is to know. What an terrible state that child would live in! There must always be something we do not know, there must always be doubt. Nothing then is fixed, but everything is fluid around us; knowledge/science is believed, then new theories are born and knowledge/science progresses on.

I came across this story about Genelle Guzman-McMillan, a World Trade Center survivor. Who decides who Paul was? I can be skeptical, but I can never be absolutely certain.

I don't want to speak for fanatics, I do no like a rabid Christians, or rabid Jews or rabid Muslims telling me I must believe. But nor do I like rabid atheists, telling people they have some sort of mental disability if they believe in a God

I remember a few years ago reading a biography of an Asian woman and her family who came to Australia. In the book, she talks about her grandmother living in an apartment in Hong Kong. One day a couple of Christian missionaries knocked on her door and were invited in. In the lounge room they happened to spy a statue of the Buddha and told the grandmother that if she was going to be a Christian then she couldn't have statues of Buddha in the apartment. The grandmother decided that she would give the statue to other members of her family. No, said the Christians, she needed to spread the gospel to others, not give them statues. Not knowing what to do, the grandmother smashed the statue. It was a family heirloom.

No one has the right to claim absolute truth

A really good documentary that I found on the religion/atheism debate is this one, I think in the end,it all comes down to respecting each others values.

Gnawings

Do you ever get a gnawing feeling that doesn't go away? Something that claws at you, something that always seems to find your attention. The other day, a letter came from my daughter's new primary school welcoming us as new members of the school and informing us of orientation events before she starts next year. It got me thinking, how is she going to go next year, will she enjoy school, or will she hate it? What about the future, what will she be like in twenty years? Will she be at university?

I look at my daughter and mostly I feel proud of her, but she also acts as a mirror and I can see myself. Then, things about my past start grinding and I'm thinking of hopes and dreams and where they are taking me. All those, would bes and will bes and going tos. Where are they? Not gone but they echo on and on. But you know again, children will fall over and get up again and carry on. Why can't adults do this? why do we collect the baggage on the way? Paul in Corinthians tells us "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things." But the point is we don't. What we need to do is stop over analysing, stop complicating things by thinking too much, get more into the moment. Own your life and stop listening to those gnawing whispers, those echoes of what you were, be who you are!

Cooking

Ah cooking remember that! I was going to write about cooking, and gardening and learning Mandarin

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On Saturday evening, I delivered up one of the best meals I've cooked so far. First I cooked Julie Goodwin's recipe for lamb chops and potato bake accompanied by the BBC Food's recipe for cauliflower cheese I Can't say my daughter raved about it. For her, only her mother's cooking is acceptable, well half the time. However, Zhe thought it was pretty good. So that is good enough for me. Tomorrow, Saturday I am going to continue with the baking theme and do a minced beef and potato bake. So I will see how that goes

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Hopefully, the weather gods will be smiling over Melbourne and the weather is good so I can do some gardening. We bought two chickens home last week, so I am looking forward to them following me around looking for worms as I dig

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OK, just a short one for you this week. What are you doing on the weekend?

Creation, (Happiness 101)

I am a sucker for a good creation story.

Here's one from Nigeria. I learned this a few years ago, but from where I have forgotten. Possibly I heard it on the radio.

In the beginning the Gods created the tortoise, then humans and then the rocks. All were immortal. They lived like this for thousands of years, but one day the tortoises became bored with life, so they went to the Gods and asked permission to have something change. The Gods, decided to let the tortoises’ breed. When they informed the tortoises of their decision, the tortoises were very happy, now, the tortoises could watch their children run around and play and be happy. However, the Gods decided that if there was to be new life, there must also be death. The tortoises didn't understand what death was, but they agreed and thanked the Gods for their decision.

The next morning, when the humans woke they saw all the young tortoises playing around and thought we too would like this pleasure. So they went to the Gods and asked if they also could have children. Yes, said the Gods but you also must have death. Humans didn't know what death was either but like the tortoises they agreed.

That afternoon, the humans heard a great wailing coming from the direction of the tortoises. Such a noise of anguish had never been heard before. Some tortoises had died. The humans watching this new phenomenon of death and the grieving, began to have second thoughts about talking to the Gods, but felt powerless to do anything. So the next morning there was birth, but there was also death among the humans.

Meanwhile the rocks had been quiet. The Gods decided that it was only fair that they ask the rocks if they wanted anything. The rocks seeing death among the tortoises and humans chose to remain silent. So, today there is death among humans and animals but the rocks live forever.

I have finished with the Wonderbox and have been reading David Malouf’s The Happy Life. I have found it to be a very interesting and thought provoking book that looks into what makes a happy life. Although, as the responses to it, included in the book highlight, it is somewhat problematic and a little, but not completely unsatisfactory at conclusion. There were a few gems that I found and they have now sent me off, wanting to read more on the subject

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One of the ideas that I felt interesting was the way Malouf highlights how the notion of happiness has changed down the ages. At the time that Jefferson sat down to write the American Constitution and included the line about the “pursuit of happiness” his idea of happiness, was more a state of being with God and doing good, not, what we think happiness is today. Akin to this is his contemporary, William Penn writing in his Fruits of a Father’s Love, that happiness is the holy fear of God. (For fear, read awe) So happiness at this time was religious in nature and not the feelings that we associate happiness with today.

Another gem for me was the story concerning Plato’s Protagoras of how Epimetheus distributed to each creature that was to inhabit the Earth their own special qualities and characteristics each would need to survive. For example, some animals were given the ability to run fast, others were given the ability to live underground away from animals that would hunt them as prey. Some animals were given fur so that they could survive the elements; others were given fins and the ability to swim etc. You get the picture. Anyway, Epimetheus finished distributing all the qualities and characteristics that he had and only then did he notice that there was one creature he had forgotten and this creature, was you guessed it, human

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Not knowing what to do, Epimetheus turns to Prometheus who decides that humans will just have to live on their own resources. Thus we have to make do on our own and get for ourselves the gifts and talents that were denied us. But what this does is give us the power to think and ruminate over things, to see how the other half live and want what they have, to dream and to covet and be unhappy with our lot when we see others enjoying a life that we can't lead.

Do you get the message? The search for happiness has been with us from the beginning. But also, notions of happiness change. This is important to understand in our own search for happiness. These are the messages that I took from Malouf's book. Go to a library and borrow it. It is a short book, you can read it for yourselves in a couple of hours.

Now for some song lyrics. See if you can remember, sing along even.

What about this, from the Ray Conniff singers?

Happiness is (Happiness is) Happiness is (Happiness is) Happiness is (Happiness is) Different things to different people That's what happiness is.

Or, do you remember The Who's Tommy? Shortly after smashing the mirror and coming out of his withdrawal, Tommy aka Roger Daltrey, breaks into "I'm free". The lyric has been with me ever since I first heard it. I don't even need to google it.

If I told you what it takes to reach the highest high, You'd laugh and say nothing's that simple! But you've been shown many times before Messiahs pointed to the door, But no one had the guts to leave the temple

. And finally, of course there is this one. Is there a more timeless song!

When I'm watching my TV and a man comes on and tells me How white my shirts can be But, he can't be a man 'cause he doesn't smoke The same cigarettes as me

I can't get no. Oh, no, no, no. Hey, hey, hey That's what I say I can't get no satisfaction, I can't get no satisfaction 'Cause I try and I try and I try and I try I can't get no, I can't get no...no satisfaction

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For thousands of years we believed that the Gods fated us with happiness. Or, if we only wait for heaven we will be dwelling in Paradise. Then came the Enlightenment and we thought that happiness could be found in nature or, until at least we either lost our heads, or took heads in the Terror,Liberté, égalité, fraternité. Until now, when happiness is a commodity that we can buy in a bottle, or in a new car. The old religion is on the wane and a more baser religion has arisen. One full of social media, advertising, self help gurus, buy this, buy that, be happy.

In our search, if you will, for happiness, we need to ensure that the happiness that we are looking for is our own and not what someone tries to tell us should make us happy. It need's to be our very own happiness and not someone trying to sell us a new car, or if you only would buy this makeup, or if you were only a little bit more thinner. Or even win the lottery

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So I'm going to dabble into reading a few books in my search for my own happiness. For you, why not think about what makes you happy?

(Looking back over this, I'm thinking you're all thinking. Wow, who is this guy? Is he serious?)